Paul Barber – Two apparently unrelated events that together raise important questions about the West's responsibility for conflicts in the world's poorest countries are being held in London today.

Belinda Tasker, Paul Mulvey, Sydney – Gough Whitlam's defence minister admits he concealed secret details from the prime minister about the deaths of five Australian newsmen in East Timor in 1975.

Jakarta – The surprising silent protest by East Timorese members of the joint Indonesia-Timor Leste commission at its recent hearing is expected to be the first and the last because such action could hamper commission activities.

P.P. McGuinness – The coronial inquiry into the 1975 deaths of the five journalists in Balibo, East Timor, is an interesting exercise in raking over old controversies – or should be. So far it seems to be yet another of the many politicised attacks on Indonesia which have characterised this issue from the start.

Hamish McDonald – The former Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, today denied having any advanced knowledge of the Indonesian attack in East Timor in which five Australian newsmen were killed in 1975.

Mr Whitlam also revealed he had twice warned the Channel Seven journalist, Greg Shackleton, not to go to East Timor.

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – United Nations police and civilian staff are openly violating what the UN promised would be a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual abuse and misconduct in deeply religious East Timor.

Stephen Fitzpatrick, Dili – The huge white UN choppers, with their gruffly spoken Russian crews, have delivered hundreds of thousands of ballot papers and sealed boxes across the country; tiny pack ponies are standing by, ready to carry vital electoral materials across rocky streams in the most remote of locations.

Dili – East Timor's ruling party Sunday accused foreign peacekeeping troops of a deliberate campaign to upset its chances of winning this week's presidential election.

The Fretilin party claimed several thousand Australian-led troops were intimidating its supporters and trying to disrupt its rallies during canvassing ahead of Wednesday's poll.

Dili – Pius Soares sits idly under a tree in a refugee camp with his friends. Like thousands of East Timorese waiting to return home after last year's deadly violence, he has time on his hands.

Bhimanto Suwastoyo, Dili – Two radically different candidates are set to contest Wednesday's East Timor presidential election, with a globe-trotting polyglot pitted against a shy, former guerrilla for the post.

It should come as no surprise that Australian Prime Minister John Howard's presence in Dili on the day of Timor Leste's Independence on May 20, 2002 was also to sign the new Timor Sea Treaty (TST).

Timor Leste's government, on Independence Day, and its people never had the opportunity to fully debate and consider the implications of the TST.

Ahmad Pathoni, Jakarta – Charges that Indonesian troops committed gross rights violation during East Timor's 1999 vote for independence were "senseless and crazy", the country's military chief at the time told a truth commission on Saturday.

Lindsay Murdoch, Same – East Timorese MP Leandro Isaac has a blunt message for Australian troops who hunted him in East Timor's rugged mountains for two months. "You are stupid," he said yesterday.

"You never bothered to find out about us... you don't know who we are or what we believe in."

Karen Michelmore, Jakarta – The former head of Indonesia's armed forces has conceded that "one or two" of his men may have been involved in the bloodshed that swept East Timor in 1999.

East Timor's ruling party Fretilin has accused the favourite in next week's presidential elections, Jose Ramos Horta, of buying votes.

Campaigning for the second round of the poll is becoming increasingly acrimonious. And as SBS correspondent Brian Thomson reports, the Australian-led International Security Force is in Fretilin's sights.

Reporters Without Borders today hailed the resumption this week of an inquest into the murders of cameraman Brian Peters and four other journalists 32 years ago in East Timor, saying it hoped every aspect of their deaths would be clarified and insisting that it was not too late for those responsible to be punished.

New York – The Indonesian government should do everything in its power to compel former military commander and minister of information Yunus Yosfiah to testify in an Australian inquest into the 1975 deaths of five Australian television journalists, The Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Alvin Darlanika Soedarjo, Jakarta – An observer with the Asian Network for Free and Fair Elections (Anfrel), which monitored the East Timor independence vote in 1999, testified Wednesday that the referendum was "fair".

Dili – Foreign troops securing East Timor found a gun, other weapons and cash in a convoy of cars carrying ruling Fretilin party officials Wednesday, presidential candidate Jose Ramos-Horta claimed.

Jakarta – A former East Timor police chief cried as he told a commission on Wednesday that he was powerless to prevent deadly violence from raging in the country during its 1999 vote for independence.

Sydney – A former telephone operator has told an inquest she overheard details about the fatal shooting of five Australian-based newsmen in East Timor in 1975.

Vicky Burchill-Hunt told the inquest into the death of Brian Peters, one of the five men killed at Balibo, that she listened in to a phone call from Dili to a reporter in Melbourne 32 years ago.

Belinda Tasker, Sydney – The Balibo Five were shot by Indonesian military chiefs after trying to surrender, and had their blood smeared on a painting of an Australian flag, a coronial inquest has heard.

Havana – Cuban doctors serving in East Timor have already made more than one million patient consultations, reported Dr. Alberto Rignak Vaz, coordinator of Cuba's international medical brigade in East Timor. Dr. Rignak noted that the Cuban physicians have carried out 1,720 operations, have assisted some 8,100 women during childbirth and have rehabilitated nearly 6,300 patients.

Hamish McDonald – They have been conspicuously absent so far, but two of Indonesia's generals yesterday spoke to the Sydney inquest into the deaths of five Australian-based newsmen at Balibo in 1975. Unfortunately, it was far from a live appearance.

Jill Jolliffe – The high level of instability afflicting East Timor since independence in May 2002 has its international partners wondering whether the new nation is suffering more than post-independence growing pains. Perhaps, they speculate, it is time to declare it a basket case.

Aboeprijadi Santoso, Amsterdam – The horrendous crimes committed in East Timor in 1999 continue to haunt Indonesia.

Dili – East Timor interim premier Estanislau Da Silva has accused prime minister and presidential candidate Jose Ramos Horta of having shown contempt for the country's institutions when he unilaterally called off the hunt for renegade general Alfredo Reinado.

Dili – Timor Leste's President Xanana Gusmao was elected the chairman of a controversial new political party on Monday.

Gusmao was the sole candidate for the chairmanship of the new organisation, the National Congress of Reconstruction of Timor (CNRT), which has already drawn criticism from a rival party.

Mark Dodd – A damaging rift has opened between East Timor's two rival presidential candidates over the treatment of a group of army mutineers whose demands for military reform a year ago brought the country to the brink of civil war.

Jose Ramos-Horta has won the backing of a key powerbroker ahead of next month's presidential vote in East Timor by agreeing to call off a manhunt for a fugitive rebel soldier wanted by Australian troops, party officials have said.

Sandy George, Film writer – It has taken four years to work out how to turn the story of the Balibo Five, the TV newsmen killed in East Timor on October 16, 1975, into a feature film. But director Robert Connolly (The Bank, Three Dollars) is confident filming can begin.

Keiji Hirano, Tokyo – Human right groups in Japan and East Timor have launched a campaign to donate history teaching materials to the newly independent nation that focus on the struggles of women who were forced to provide sex to Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Ahmad Pathoni, Dili – Portuguese is one of the two official languages in East Timor, but you can hardly hear it spoken in the streets of the young nation.

The tiny country was a Portuguese colony for more than three centuries, but only an estimated 5 percent of its one million people now speak the European language.

Richard Baker – A former senior Australian Government negotiator has criticised a controversial new treaty between Australia and East Timor that fails to permanently establish a maritime boundary between the two countries.

Tito Belo, Dili – East Timor Prime Minister Jose Ramos-Horta met with a rebel representative on Thursday to discuss an end to a military operation against a fugitive army renegade.

Max Lane – "The PST has increased its vote slightly on its results in 2000", Avelino Coelho da Silva, secretary-general of the Socialist Party of Timor, told Green Left Weekly by telephone from Dili.

Dili – East Timor officials have said they have found more discrepancies in last week's presidential election while stressing the poll's outcome will remain unchanged.

Some votes counted in the poll, the first since the impoverished nation gained its independence in 2002, would be re-checked amid concerns of irregularities, they said.

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – The first indication there would be problems with East Timor's presidential election came days before when Martinho Gusmao, a key member of the organising commission, publicly endorsed the rising star of the country's politics, Fernado "Lasama" de Araujo.

Dili – The confusion surrounding the first round of voting in East Timor's presidential election mounted Saturday when the election commission said a district with 100,000 eligible voters had produced three times as many votes.

Dili residents are angry about the latest Australian military operations, apparently undertaken to increase pressure on the fugitive Major Alfredo Reinado.

Eight Reinado family members were detained during a night-time raid on their central Dili home on Monday, a move prompting criticism from human rights watchdog Yayasan Hak.

Ahmad Pathoni, Dili – East Timor's election commission rejected on Thursday calls for a vote recount as the tiny nation looked set for a presidential run-off between Prime Minister Jose Ramos-Horta and the ruling Fretilin Party's candidate.

Tony Eastley: Doubts are being raised about the fairness of the Presidential election in East Timor with claims of vote manipulation and voter intimidation.

The accusations come from five of the eight candidates. The Electoral Commission says it won't investigate though until it receives a formal complaint.

Dili – An East Timor human rights group said Thursday it had received reports that supporters of the troubled nation's ruling party had intimidated voters ahead the country's presidential election.

"We have reports from the districts and we noted an increase of violence from Fretilin members," said Jose Luis de Oliveira, of the human rights group Yayasan HAK.

Abdul Khalik, Dili – Opening his math book, Manuel da Silva, 17, discovered he had something to clarify before he could finish the homework his teacher had given him.

"I don't understand question number three," he told his teacher in Indonesian, his eyes not moving from his Indonesian-language textbook

Lindsay Murdoch, Dili – East Timorese voted in record numbers yesterday in a peaceful election for president. There were few signs of violence, particularly in Dili where politically motivated gangs have been fighting pitched battles for months.

Stephen Fitzpatrick, Dili – Hundreds of thousands of East Timorese queued for hours under a blazing sun yesterday to choose a new president in the first election wholly run by the young country.

['Negligent Neighbour: New Zealand's Complicity in the Invasion and Occupation of Timor-Leste' by Maire Leadbeater. 280 pages $34.99Craig Potton Publishing.]

Joe Humphreys – It is the first such ballot since the country gained independence in 2002 – after 21/2 years of transitional rule by the UN, and a 24-year occupation by an often brutal Indonesian military.

Ahmad Pathoni, Dili – East Timorese streamed to the polls on Monday to vote for a new president, hoping the election can help end deep divisions after a year of instability in one of the world's youngest and poorest nations.

Stephen Fitzpatrick, Dili – Jose Ramos Horta went to Easter mass at the weekend with "a host of sins" to confess, not least of which was having entertained lustful thoughts towards the film star Jennifer Lopez while presenting her with a prize in Berlin last year.